Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric - Hardcover

Mark Amory has been the Literary Editor of The Spectator for the last twenty-five years, thus making him the longest serving Literary Editor in London. In addition to his Lord Berners biographer he has written one on Lord Dunsany, as well as editing the published letters of Ann Fleming and Evelyn Waugh and a volume of Marc Boxer's drawings and cartoons.

Amory, former literary editor of the Spectator, chronicles the life of Lord Berners, a ``dilettante in the very best sense'' (in Osbert Sitwells words) who excelled in music, painting, and writing, mingled with famous 20th-century bohemians, and had the financial security to establish the lifestyle he desired. Everything fell into the lap of Gerald Berners, born into a blue-blooded English family: years at Eton were followed by extensive educational travels throughout Europe, honorary diplomatic positions in Constantinople and Rome, and the inheritance of noble titles and estates. Although he took his place in the high society for granted, Berners nevertheless found the company of eccentric artists more congenial, as he himself was driven by a strong and variegated creative impulse. As a composer, he collaborated with Diaghilev, Balanchine, Stravinsky, and Gertrude Stein. When Berners turned to painting, choosing Corot as his model, several exhibitions of his landscapes enjoyed considerable success, and his novels and autobiography (in two volumes, both published here in 1998) found many a sympathetic reader. Berners had the good fortune to wine and dine with many celebrities, from D.H. Lawrence to Gershwin. However, he was not universally liked and was even the target of numerous snide comments, of which Virginia Woolf's were the most venomous. He possessed, in fact, a plethora of unpleasant traits, including hypochondria, neurosis and an obsessive anxiety about money, although he grew ever richer with the years. His personal life was generally devoid of passion, and his years-long commitment to a young homosexual companion and would-be heir of Berners's estate, Robert Heber Percy, was clouded by Percy's frequent infidelities and eventual marriage. Amory's assertions as to Lord Berners's extreme eccentricity remain largely unsubstantiated. While he frequently catered to somewhat unusual whims, Berners's extravagance pales in comparison with that of his acquaintance, the unsurpassed eccentric Dal, who once had Berners play a piano that was stationed in a shallow pond. Lord Berners possessed solid but second-rate talents, and his biography is above all an interesting secondary source on his more prominent contemporaries. (16 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.